A Humanitarian Crisis the Trump Administration Worsened: Wash Post Editorial Slams Lack of US Investment in Central America; Nick Kristof on the True Emergency at the Border Trump Helped Create

Ahead of this week’s Senate vote on the resolution to block Trump’s unconstitutional emergency declaration, the Trump administration has been relying on a vicious cycle of circular logic and lies to attempt to justify that there’s a crisis that only a border wall will fix. Despite the impending congressional rebuke of their power grab, the White House is refusing to adjust course and is set to include $8.6 billion in wall funding in the new White House budget request. Watching these cynical maneuvers unfold, several leading observers are highlighting the roots and true nature of the emergency:

The spike in numbers is a genuine humanitarian crisis but not one that would best be addressed by adding more border barriers. Mitigating the migrant flow requires, first and foremost, a renewed focus on improving the conditions driving migrants to leave their home countries. Unfortunately, the administration is doing the opposite.

…The unintended (but highly conceivable) consequences of building more miles of border barrier include pushing those asylum seekers to cross in ever more isolated spots.

…his administration had already taken steps to trim U.S. aid for the crime-ridden, impoverished countries of the so-called Northern Triangle. For example, the $69 million the administration requested for development aid in the current fiscal year for Guatemala — a major source of the most recent migrants — is the smallest ask in a decade.

…Mr. Trump’s instinct to punish, not help, countries whose people leave is the wrong prescription for a mounting problem at the border.

And in his Sunday New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof writes “‘An Angel From God,’ and Border Agents Took Her,” telling the story of a Guatemalan father named Clemente, who recently reunited with his teenage daughter, Wendy, after the Trump administration separated them after their asylum request last August – two months after the supposed rescinding of the catastrophic zero tolerance policy. Kristof captures that the real crisis is humanitarian in nature:

family separations, continuing but at a lower level than before, are an element of the real “emergency” at the border — the one also involving physical and sexual abuse of immigrant children in U.S. custody and systematic deception from Washington.

…Immigration is a complicated challenge, but ripping families apart isn’t the solution. Perhaps the best approach is to help improve security in Central America so that people like Clemente need not flee.

…So, yes, President Trump, you’re right that there’s an emergency at the border. It’s a humanitarian crisis of family separation that you helped create.

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